— God damn you! give me that God-damned thing! Anselm burst out, swinging round and tearing the paper from the loose fingers; and the haggard face dropped out of sight, to bob up once more with, — Cause face it… and disappear again, as Anselm tore the shred of paper into smaller and smaller bits.
— Look Anselm, Max said coming up to him, — why don't you be reasonable? You'll end up like Charles, this pose of yours. .
— Like Charles! And you, what… be reasonable! Anselm got to his feet. — This pose! this. . Gott-trunkener Mensch, yes, you… be reasonable! That's what they called Spinoza, your prince of rationalists, damn him, you know what they offered Spinoza to conform? A thousand florins. "Conform outwardly" they told him, but what did he do, he changed his name from Baruch to Bene-dictus. The prince of rationalists!
Max had taken a step back, and another, smiling as though embarrassed for Anselm, as Anselm came on. — And what did they do, they damned him, the lens-maker Spinoza. They excommunicated him, right into the darkness of reason. The Schammatha, they damned him in the name that contains forty-two letters, they damned him in the name of the Lord of Hosts, and the Tetragramraaton, in the name of the Globes, and the Wheels, and the Mysterious Beasts… Max was backing toward the door, toward the man in the checked suit who said, — To tell the truth I wouldn't dare go in there, they're all nuts. — I'm freezing to death, said his companion.
— In the name of Prince Michael and the Ministering Angels, Metateron, Achthariel Jah, the Seraphim, the Ofanim. . Anselm went on shrilly as Max backed out into the night. — The trumpets dropped, they reversed the candles, Amen, there's the Schammatha, damned right into the darkness of Reason. . and he stood quivering in the empty doorway for a minute, indifferent to the eyes turned on him. Then he spat in the street and came back to the table where Otto had just stood preparing to leave. — Here, take this, Anselm said to him, holding out his magazine. — There's a special article in it, Can Freaks Make Love? with illustrations, a "rare photo of Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins, with two of their natural children. ." He slumped in his chair again, and after a moment started to whistle, rasping through his teeth.
— What is that? what you're whistling, it's Bach isn't it?
He looked up at Stanley, and after a moment, — Yes, he admitted, — the seventy-eighth cantata. His elbow rested on The Moan of the Tiber.
— An aria? Stanley asked to his empty face.
— "We hasten with feeble but diligent footsteps"… a duet, Anselm said vaguely, watching Stanley stir the cold coffee, with a lifeless chill in his eyes. — Sung by women, by women's voices. .
Stanley gasped, lifting the spoon from the coffee cup. — What is it? he whispered, as the thing slipped back into the coffee. He raised it out again.
— Ha, ha, hahaha. .
The alarm clock strung to Mr. Feddle's neck went off.
— What is it? It's a… he held it in the air, unable to move, staring at it.
— You can use it for a bookmark, Stanley. For when you read Malthus. Hahahahaha. . look at what Stanley found in his coffee.
— Anselm, did you. .
— Hahahahahahahahaha
Mr. Feddle shut the clock off with one hand, finished his beer with the other, bowed to three people, stumbling away from the hollow desperate laughter behind him, out the door where he bumped the man in the checked suit who said, — There, there he goes, out the other door, the side door.
Above emptied streets, the roseate heaving persisted; above bodies contorted with sleep, strewn among the battlements erected in this common war without end, some wrenched as though in the last embrace, spoke with tongues, untended and unattended, extended limbs and members to come up against the thigh of another fallen, and be similarly still, or rise distended to enter the warm nest again and swim in the dark channel, committing the final assault in the anonymity of exhaustion, hearts emptied of prayer. But the blood-luster of the sky witnessed that the battle was not done, though all were slain: it shone like the sky over the Campagna where Attila's Huns met the Romans in engagement so fierce that all were slain in deed, extreme but inconclusive, for their spirits continued the battle three nights and days over the field of unburied dead.
In the bar of a midtown hotel where the rear guard bivouacked among chrome and glass, scarred, alert, at battle stations (for there's no discharge in the war), Otto rested his left arm openly before him, raised one eyebrow, turned his lips down at the corners, flared his nostrils, and paid with a twenty-dollar bill. He spilled his drink. — Better give me another, he said. — Irish.
— You've had enough, Jack.
— Will you give me another drink?
— You've had enough tonight. Go home and sleep it off.
— Have I had enough? May I buy you a drink, madame?
— Come on, Jack, don't start any trouble. Leave the lady alone.
— I'm talking to her, not to you.
— Come on, fellow. Be a sport. Get the hell out of here.
The man in the checked suit came in the street door as Otto, clutching Can Freaks Make Love? rolled in his fight hand, strode from the bar into the lobby of the hotel.
— You want to buy some pictures?
— Pictures? Otto asked, turning.
— Girls, you know?
— Just girls?
— Yeh, what'sa matter, you queer? He started to thrust back into the envelope the pictures he had half displayed, tangles of white limbs.
— Don't I know you? Otto stared at the young man, the hat on the back of his head, the extinguished cigarette stub in the corner of his mouth. — You don't know me, Mac, the young man said quickly. — You don't know me. You want these or not.
— Let's see them.
— What's the matter, you don't trust me? I can't bring them out here. A buck for the pack.
— All right, here. Here. Otto handed him a one-dollar bill.
In the men's room, he opened the envelope. A sailor banged the door, coming in, and Otto went into a booth. He stared at the first picture; and then sat down, staring at it. He turned it up, and looked at each one, his fingers quivering against their glossy surfaces, at each one quickly, ascertaining the face, unable to contain the whole figure in his apprehension, seizing at details, the unfamiliar maple chair she sat on, curled in, the Venetian blinds, the wallpaper, the upholstery pattern on the chair, her fingernails, the lines of her knuckles, the irregular dent of her navel and the two full blots swelling toward him, detailed blemishes on the expanse of her flesh, which delineated it but could not bring it to life in any variety of pose and exposure, obstacles at which his gaze stumbled, passing over the shadowed white in a silent mania of search which led him helplessly to her face, and deserted him there, fixed by the mouth which stigmatized his hunger, fixed by the eyes which knew him, and did not move.
Aware of silence, he stared at these blemished rubrics, WARNING! ALL SO-CALLED PROPHYLACTIC TUBES. . NOT SANITU. . GENUINE! on the metal door before him, conscious only now the sounds of it ceased that the sailor had been sick in a wash basin.
— Hey, come on out, you want a good browning?
He sat, paralyzed by silence, suddenly cold and in detailed motion, shivering. The metal door before him banged, and rattled on the latch. — Hey, come out of there, what are you doin in there, poundin your pork?
Another door banged.
— O.K., sailor. Be a sport. Get the hell out of here.
He heard that; and heard the scuff of shoes on the tile floor; and listening, heard nothing,